• The Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world, was created about 60 million years ago. India (at that time a separate continent) rapidly moved northward and collided with Asia, and the crash produced these amazing mountains. The famous Mt. Everest stands above the other peaks at 29,035 feet, making it the tallest mountain on the planet. Thousands of people have tried to climb it; more than 700 have succeeded, but at least 150 have died trying.
• The Great Barrier Reef, located in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is the world’s largest coral reef. It is over 1,400 miles in length—so long that it can be seen from space. An estimated 1,500 species of fish and 350 types of coral live and grow on the Great Barrier Reef.
MILESTONES
IN HISTORY
• The Chinese invented sunglasses in the 1400s. The first people to wear them were judges who were trying to conceal their expressions in court.
• The presidential mansion was originally gray. It wasn’t called the White House until it was painted white to cover the damage caused by the British in the War of 1812.
• Squanto, one of the first Native Americans the Pilgrims met in the New World, had lived in England for nine years. He’d been taken from his village by around 1605 and eventually made his way back home.
• The flag that Francis Scott Key was looking at off in the distance when he wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” was 30 feet high by 42 feet wide.
• It makes for a great story, but Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. The first patent was awarded to Joseph Adamson in 1853.
• If you’d been born before the ninth century, you wouldn’t have had to study punctuation. There wasn’t any!
• Painted fingernails originated in China; the color indicated social rank.
SPIDERS
• Spiders spin silk out of organs called “spinnerets.”
• Spiders can get trapped in their own webs if they trip or fall.
• The “dragline silk” that spiders use to get down from the ceiling to the floor is comparatively stronger than a steel rope.
• The idea of farming spiders for their silk doesn’t work very well because they tend to eat each other.
• Some spiders walk up walls by secreting sticky silk onto their feet. Others use microscopic hairs on their legs that slip into the wall’s nooks and crannies.
• The full name of the spider-heroine of Charlotte’s Web is Charlotte A. Cavatica, after the scientific name of the barn spider: Araneus cavaticus.
• The world’s biggest spider, the Goliath birdeater tarantula, hardly ever eats birds. It prefers rodents and frogs.
• Camel spiders are the world’s fastest: They’ve been clocked at close to 10 miles per hour.
• Genetic engineers have bred goats that have spider-silk genes inside them. Silk proteins can be harvested from the goats’ milk.
• Spiders aren’t insects—they’re arachnids. Unlike insects, they have no antennae and they have eight legs (insects have six legs).
THE ROYALS
• King Philip IV of Spain (1605–1665) is rumored to have smiled only three times in his life.
• Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) owned 150 wigs and 2,000 pairs of gloves. She wore a necklace with a perfume bottle attached—probably because the people around her smelled bad. (Elizabethans believed that taking baths could make you sick.)
• In 2005, Swaziland’s King Mswati III bought 10 new BMWs for his wives.
• Number of serfs that Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1729–1796) gave away as gifts: 45,000.
• Ethelred the Unready became king of England in 968 A.D., at the age of 10. He was called “Unready” because he had trouble making decisions.
• Eighteen French kings have been named Louis. Louis IX became a saint; Louis XVI died on the guillotine.
• When Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang died in 210 B.C., more than 8,000 life-size statues were buried in his grave with him.
• King Charles VIII of France (1470–1498) had six toes on one foot.
LADIES &
GENTLEMEN
• In the United States, there are about five million more women than men.
• The average woman walks at a pace of 274 feet per minute. The average man walks faster, but not by much: He moves at 275 feet per minute.
• In 1950 only 2% of the members of the armed forces was female. As of 2004—54 years later—the number was up to 15%.
• Women have more sweat glands than men, but men’s sweat glands are more active (they sweat more).
• Men talk on their wireless phones more than women, but women use their camera phones more than men.
• Women are more likely to have gardened in the last 12 months: More than half of all women got dirt under their fingernails. Only a third of all men did.
• Who reads more? Women. Last year 55% of women opened a book, while only 38% of men did.
• Is this fair? In 2003, females aged 15 and older working full-time all year earned 76¢ for every $1 their male counterparts earned. In 2004, that was up to a whopping…77¢.
GEOGRAPHY
• Old news from the Middle East: Damascus, Syria, was a flourishing city a few thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 B.C., which makes it the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
• The name Canada is from a Huron-Iroquoian word meaning “village” or “settlement.”
• The country with the smallest population: Pitcairn Island in Polynesia, with 67 residents.
• Only 20 of Ohio’s 2,500 lakes are natural—all the rest are man-made.
• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• The northernmost point in the United States is Point Barrow, Alaska; the southernmost point is more than 3,600 miles away in Ka Lae, Hawaii.
• There are no arid deserts in Europe.
• Amatignak Island, Alaska, is the westernmost point in the United States. Believe it or not, 70 miles west of that is the easternmost point: Pochnoi Point on Semisopochnoi Island, Alaska. (It’s on the other side of the international date line, where the eastern hemisphere begins.)
• Pop quiz: Is Australia an island or a continent? Answer: Scientists are still arguing about it.
HOUSE PETS
• Only 22% of people say they would sacrifice themselves to save their husband or wife. But 85% say they would risk their life to save their pet.
• Babies who live with cats and dogs tend to develop fewer allergies.
• According to a survey of pet owners, 21% of dogs and 7% of cats snore.
• Nine out of 10 pet owners think of their pets as members of the family.
• Iguanas recognize their human owners and greet them differently than they greet strangers.
• A family paid Texas A&M University $2,300,000 to clone their pet Collie, Missy.
• If you want to move to Hawaii, your cat or dog might have to be kept in quarantine there for as long four months. If your dog is part wolf, forget about him moving there at all.
• It’s official: After studying thousands of papers on the subject, the National Academy of Sciences has declared that too many pets are overweight.
• 10% of women who own cats say they have ended a relationship because their partner didn’t like their cat.
AMERICAN
HISTORY
• Among the names the early Congress considered for their newly independent country were: United States of Columbia, Appalachia, Alleghania, and Freedonia.
• President George Washington made sure his six horses had their teeth brushed every day.
• America’s first bank, the Bank of North America, was established in Philadelphia in 1781.
• The first woman to run for U.S. president: Victoria Woodhull, in 1872. (She lost to Ulysses S. Grant.)
• There were 11 states in the Confederacy, 23 states in the Union.
• 102 Pilgrims sailed to America on th
e Mayflower in 1620. Fewer than half survived the first winter.
• Patrick Henry owned 65 slaves when he threw down the challenge “Give me liberty or give me death.”
• July 4th didn’t become a legal holiday until 1941.
• Annapolis, Maryland, served as the capital of America from 1783 to 1784.
• President Ulysses S. Grant once got a speeding ticket for riding his horse too fast. The fine? $20.
EVOLUTIONARY,
WATSON!
• Trilobites, ancient relatives of shrimp, spiders, and insects, were the first creatures on Earth to have eyes.
• The most common fossil animals are brachiopods, a type of shellfish.
• It used to be thought that the smallest dinosaur was the compsognathus, which was about the size of a chicken, but the fossil of a smaller one, the microraptor, was recently found in China. It’s about the size of a crow.
• The first shellfish made their appearance about 570 million years ago.
• The first plant known to grow on land, the Cooksonia—named after Australian scientist Isabel Cookson—had no roots, leaves, or flowers.
• Magnolias are the first known flowering plants.
• 450 million years ago, the Sahara desert was covered in ice.
• 200 million years ago, Antarctica was near the equator and joined to Africa, Australia, India, and the tip of South America.
• Neanderthals were named for the valley (the thal) where they were discovered in 1856: the Neander Valley in Germany.
THE WRITTEN
WORD
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been translated into 44 languages.
• Wow! Writer Tom Wolfe used 2,343 exclamation points in his novel Bonfire of the Vanities.
• Watch your language: Shakespeare used the word “damned” 105 times in his plays. (But don’t you use it!)
• There are only 17 syllables in the Japanese poetry form called haiku. Most haiku focus on the beauty of nature, but the form is open to wordplay like this:
After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?
• Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak named his dog “Herman” after Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick.
• The monster in Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley’s book Frankenstein doesn’t die at the end of the story like he does in the movies. He’s last seen running across an Arctic ice field.
• British author Charles Dickens wrote Little Dorritt based on his own life experience: He had to go to work when he was only 12 years old because his father was put into debtor’s prison.
BEASTLY
APPETITES
• The only mammals who feed exclusively on blood: vampire bats.
• Electrifying fact: Carnivorous animals (meat eaters) won’t eat an animal that’s been hit by lightning.
• A baby robin eats 14 feet of earthworms every day.
• The Yanomami Indians of South America call jaguars “The Eaters of Souls,” because of the legendary belief that they consume the spirits of the dead.
• The anaconda snake’s teeth aren’t for chewing. They hold onto prey so it can’t escape.
• Tigers have a reputation as man-eaters, but usually it’s only old or injured tigers who attack humans. Why? They have trouble keeping up with their usual prey.
• Rabbits love licorice (but don’t feed them candy!).
• Swimming along the surface of the water, an archer fish can shoot water out of its mouth to knock down flying bugs.
• The polar bear has an enormous appetite—it can eat as much as 100 pounds of whale blubber in a single sitting.
• Dromedary camels (one-hump camels) can drink 30 gallons of water in 10 minutes.
SUPERSTITIONS
• You won’t find a fourth floor in a Japanese hospital, because the Japanese word for “four” sounds a lot like the Japanese word for “death.”
• Scandinavian superstition: A boy and girl who eat from the same loaf of bread are bound to fall in love.
• Some people think it’s bad luck to put a hat on a bed or put shoes on a table.
• Chinese folks clean their homes from top to bottom before New Year’s Day. Cleaning on New Year’s Day might sweep away good fortune.
• In folklore, owls are notorious prophets of doom: A hooting owl is thought to be giving a warning of death.
• In some parts of England, rum is used to wash a baby’s head for good luck.
• A common good-luck custom in Spain is to eat one grape per second for the last 12 seconds of every year. (Eat small grapes…or you might choke, and there goes your good luck.)
• Don’t sing Christmas carols out of season. It’s bad luck.
OLD-TIME
OCCUPATIONS
• Men who collected and sold secondhand clothes were called ragpickers.
• Animals used to be the main means of transportation, and they can be pretty messy. So one of the jobs of a carter was to remove animal poop from the streets.
• A fuller was a person who cleaned dirty clothes.
• Peddlers, riding horses laden with pots, pans, needles, and cutlery, traveled through villages and towns trading their goods for other products offered by local people.
• From at least 3000 B.C., when few people knew how to write, scribes held important positions at temples and palaces because they could write and record information.
• The tinker traveled from door to door on horseback, carrying his tools in his saddlebags. His jobs included plugging holes in leaky basins, making handles for iron dippers, and fixing spoons and bowls.
• Every village had a town crier who announced the important news of the day.
• Medieval viziers listened to problems and impartially decided who was right and who was wrong. The vizier of yesterday is what we’d call a judge today.
• 13th-century wandering minstrels were street entertainers who hoped to be rewarded with money by onlookers.
• Coachmen transported wealthy people in comfortable, closed, four-wheeled carriages pulled by one or more horses.
• Cotters were hired by wealthy landowners to work on farms at harvest time, dig ditches, plant crops, and thatch roofs.
• In the old days, doorkeepers didn’t just guard the entrances to temples and private homes—they were also responsible for guarding the sheep at night.
• The main job of apothecaries was to grind minerals, vegetable oils, and animal fats to make medicines, cosmetics, and perfumes.
• People who carry your bags—porters and bellmen—were once known as baggage smashers.
PENGUINS
• Penguins do not live in the Arctic, the region around the North Pole. Penguins live only in the southern hemisphere.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #1: Unlike most bird species, it is the male Emperor penguin, not the female, who hatches the eggs.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #2: A father Emperor penguin will withstand the Antarctic cold for 60 days or longer to protect his egg, which rest on his feet covered with a feathered flap.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #3: During this entire time the papa penguin doesn’t eat a thing. Most lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #4: The fathers feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the moms finally return to care for the young, the dads head for the sea to eat…and rest.
WINNING WORDS
The words that turned ordinary school kids (well, maybe not so ordinary) into winners of the National Spelling Bee.
• 2006: Ursprache (noun), a parent language, especially one reconstructed from the evidence of later languages
• 2005: Appoggiatura (noun), in music, an embellishing note, usually one step above or below the note it precedes and indicated by a small note or special sign
• 2004: Autochthonous (adjective), aboriginal, indigenous, native
•
2003: Pococurante (adjective), indifferent, apathetic; (noun) one who does not care
• 2002: Prospicience (noun), seeing ahead, knowing in advance, foreseeing
• 2001: Succedaneum (noun), something that can be used as a substitute (especially any medicine that may be taken in place of another)
• 2000: Démarche (noun), course of action, maneuver
• 1999: Logorrhea (noun), excessive talkativeness, especially when the words are uncontrolled or incoherent, as is seen in certain psychiatric illnesses
• 1998: Chiaroscurist (noun), an artist who uses light and shade in painting or drawing
WORDS OF WAR
• Napoleon was only 26 years old when he led the French Army to a successful invasion of Italy. His last battle was at Waterloo, which he lost—that’s why when someone loses, we say they “met their Waterloo.”
• The United States produced 41,500 Sherman tanks during World War II. Today, Russia has more tanks than the United States: 21,000 to the U.S.’s 16,000. China comes in third, with 11,000.
• For the birds: Thirty-two pigeons won Dickin Medals (awarded to honor the work of animals in war) for carrying secret messages during World War II.
• The Battle of Palmito Ranch, in the far south of Texas, was the last land battle of the Civil War. The Confederates won that battle, but within a month, all their land forces had surrendered to the North.
• In 1989 the U.S. military purchased 5,118,470 pairs of green socks.
• Elastic waistbands in pants were first used during World War II—the metal used in zippers was needed for making weapons and aircraft.
• Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945 (in response to World War II), more people have been killed in wars than during World War II itself.
Uncle John’s Did You Know? Page 12